about my work
My work is a meditation on the natural word, the process of transformation, and the flow of time. The Southwest desert is my home and in decades of exploring its weathered topography of stark ethereal beauty, formed in millions of years and blinks of the eyes, the southwestern ecological community became teacher, inspiration, and the visual language to express being of the natural world.
“Abstraction is the form fitting the mess of experience and the weight of memories”
Robert Motherwell
Charles Kurre is a multi-discipline artist based in the Desert Southwest; He is an Arizona Commission on the Arts (ACA) Project Grant recipient curating an exhibition for the ACA Traveling Exhibition Program. The ACA exhibition, Language/Image/Object, explored the influence of language on visual expression. Kurre's work appeared in New American Paintings, featured in Phoenix Home & Garden Magazine and reviewed by Art News, Art & Antiques, Dialogue, and New Art Examiner magazines. Additionally, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Chicago Reader newspapers have reviewed his solo Chicago exhibitions.
Alongside his creative practice, Kurre is an accomplished outdoors person and self-taught naturalist who guided professionally in the Grand Canyon, and Zion National Parks. Kurre worked with at-risk youth in wilderness programs in the Southwest, managed fundraising efforts for an alternative transportation non-profit, and directed a Sierra Club Grand Canyon Chapter's volunteer initiative program on sustainable growth practices focused on environmental protections. He is an avid gardener specializing in plant species native to the desert southwest.